Books

More than half a century ago, Margaret Busby became Britain’s first black woman publisher, upending the literary scene. Five decades later, her work is far from done

Xi Xi’s novel “My City” takes readers back to Hong Kong in the 1970s.

Contemporary society has all but eradicated the caste system, right? Far from it, argues U.S. journalist Isabel Wilkerson

In his debut novel, Jakob Guanzon explores the reality of the “working poor” in the US. An interview about fathers and sons, money troubles and the dangerous legacy of the American Dream

A new historical world atlas claims to break away from a purely Eurocentric view of the world. It almost succeeds

Politics clashes with everyday life in Brazil, in a story of sisterhood, race and religion. Itamar Vieira Junior's debut novel thrives on this colourful mix

Cheon Myeong-kwan's expansive novel “The Whale” retells South Korea's 20th-century history as a feminist fairy tale. Twenty years after its Korean publication, European readers can finally access a modern masterpiece

Assassin flies taste with their feet, scallops have 200 eyes, fishes are “swimming tongues”. Science journalist Ed Yong explores the weird and wonderful world of animal perception

Climate change presents us with unprecedented challenges. The Indian historian Dipesh Chakrabarty calls for a change of perspective and in the process rediscovers human history

How to write about genocide: Scholastique Mukasonga reflects on her mother’s story to chart Rwanda’s troubled history.

Gulbahar Haitiwaji is the first Uighur woman to have published a book about her time in a Chinese “re-education camp”. She talks about life after publication 

The future of foreign policy is feminist, says activist and author Kristina Lunz in her new book. But what is she actually talking about?

Were gender relations hierarchical among prehistoric humans? Marylene Patou-Mathis has evidence to disprove this theory

Libraries, archives and manuscripts: ever since they have existed, they have also been at risk. Librarian Richard Ovenden has written a history of their destruction

In her debut novel, author Kayo Mpoyi digs deep into her own family history

Louise Erdrich talks about resistance by indigenous peoples in 1950s America

The author Sergei Lebedev talks about Russia’s internal conflicts, fear as a form of political pressure, and the craft of writing

Can the climate crisis still be halted? Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, authors of the Paris Agreement, are determined to keep looking forward.

The Vietnamese author Nguyen Phan Que Mai tells a family tale from her war-ravaged land

In his new book, author Parag Khanna envisages a future in which we are all migrants 

In his new graphic novel, Guy Delisle illustrates the summer job he once had in a Canadian paper and pulp factory. 

In her debut novel, Nana Oforiatta-Ayim defines both her European experience and her Ghanian roots 

In his new novel, Mathias Énard observes French rural life in the 21st century as though it were a strange, foreign culture 

At the end of the 1930s, a plague epidemic was averted in Russia. Lyudmila Ulitskaya's novel about the era reads as a parable of our time.

In her novel, author Cho Nam-Joo tells of a South Korean woman who is caught between tradition and hypermodernity